My dissertation explores a fundamental shift in the way sexual coercion was understood, from the post World War II period to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It challenges the idea that sexual violence was discovered" by feminists during the sexual revolution by revealing a longer history of debate over the meaning of coercion itself. Moreover, it argues that feminist attempts to expand the legal definition of "rape" ultimately excluded other forms of coercion from the discourse of sexual violence. Beginning with the academic and popular debates over coercion in the pre-sexual revolution era and ending with American involvement in the first ever rape-as-a-war-crime trials at ICTY, my dissertation traces the consolidation of sexual coercion into sexual violence and the subsequent feminist mobilization of "violence against women" into international human rights forums.